Dr. Rami approaches with the IV, and I extend my arm without being asked. I've done this before. My heart still hammers as they spray the crook of my arm with alcohol and the hard pinch of a needle immediately follows.
Somehow, I manage to not visibly wince as she adjusts the needle, fishing for just the right vein, but when I glance up at Knight looming over me, there’s still nothing but fear in those normally feral scarred eyes.
“See?” I manage to whisper to him, trying my best to smile. It probably looks more like a grimace. “I’m okay.”
He growls softly, affectionately, but he chokes on it. He reaches out, and even from a distance, he manages to lightly caress my cheek with the dull back edge of a metal claw.
My eyes flutter shut at his touch.
Breathe, Cosima.
The doctor finally slides the cool catheter into my vein and withdraws the needle. "This will just help you relax," she says, connecting a bag of clear fluid with a slight silvery tint to the line. Like liquid moonlight. "You'll feel drowsy, but you won't lose consciousness completely."
Liar.
I can tell by the way she won't quite meet my eyes.
But I don't call her on it. Because if I do, Knight will tear her limb from limb. And then everyone else in the room. So I just nod and settle back against the table.
"We're going to start the sedative now," another doctor announces.
I watch the liquid flow through the tube, shivering as a cold sensation begins crawling up my arm. Within seconds, warmth spreads instead through my chest and then my entire body. A warm bath from the inside out.
My eyelids grow heavy.
"How did you convince her to do this?" Geo's voice, rough and worried, cuts through the haze that's starting to cloud my thoughts.
"I told her the truth." Nikolai's response is quiet. "That I couldn't tell her everything. That telling her directly could kill her."
Then Azarel's voice, sharp with fury from just outside the door. “You told herwhat?”
"That the truth could be lethal," Nikolai repeats, and there's steel in his voice now. "Would you rather I lied to her? Said everything was fine when we all know it's not?"
"You had no right?—"
"Neither did you," Nikolai cuts him off. "You lost that right, fuckingvryzat."
The machines whir to life. The table starts to move, sliding me under the massive metal ring that’s now spinning around me.
My breathing kicks up, panic clawing through the settling sedative fog.
Knight's rumbling intensifies, and I turn my head—so heavy now, like it's filled with concrete—to look at him.
He's staring at the machine, at me sliding under it, and his entire body is rigid to the point he isn’t even breathing. He might as well be a frozen statue, his eyes locked on me yet completely blank, as if he’s mentally somewhere far from here. Maybe in his past.
"It's okay," I try to tell him, but my words come out slurred. "I'm okay."
He doesn’t react.
And I'm not okay.
Something's wrong.
The feeling hits me like ice water, cutting through the warm haze of the sedative. Some instinct I can't name, some primal warning that screamsdanger.
I try to sit up, but my body won't respond. The sedative has me locked in place, paralyzed but conscious enough to know I should be fighting this.
"Wait—" I manage to get the word out, but it's barely a whisper.
